


Grotto

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Midnighters Timestamps [12]
Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013)
Genre: Cuddling, Established Relationship, Fluff, Holiday, M/M, Swimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 08:57:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6045628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Do we have to go?” he asks, sitting heavily on the bed and drawing up the blankets over his thighs. Nigel paces in front of him - cigarette at the ready for the inevitable argument should negotiations fail - and says only one thing:</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“He has a fucking pool, darling.”</i>
</p><p>Nigel's friend owes him a favor. A twenty-room, grotto-pool, very expensive favor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grotto

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheSeaVoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSeaVoices/gifts).



> Beta'd by our brilliant [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/) :D thank you bb!!
> 
> For our incredible [TheSeaVoices](http://theseavoices.tumblr.com/), who drew [utterly stunning art](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/post/139543440750/happy-spacedogs-appreciation-week-we-coming) for this piece.
> 
> Written for Spacedogs Appreciation Week 2016

Adam doesn’t like change. Adam doesn’t like uprooting himself from his comfortable environment to find another one. Adam trusts Nigel, inherently, but it hardly means he won't complain.

“Do we have to go?” he asks, sitting heavily on the bed and drawing up the blankets over his thighs. Nigel paces in front of him - cigarette at the ready for the inevitable argument should negotiations fail - and says only one thing:

“He has a fucking pool, darling.”

Adam has voiced enough times how much he enjoys swimming and how rarely he gets to do so. He refuses to go to public pools, the ocean is far away, and baths are hardly big enough. He always shakes off the idea when Nigel brings it up and diverts to something far more interesting. But this he can’t deny intrigues him.

“What kind of pool?” Adam asks. “Is it warm?”

“Of course it’s fucking warm,” Nigel says. Hopes. Considers, only after he’s already made his declaration. The fucker who owns the place wants to be a gay Hugh Hefner or some shit, replete with his Montauk mansion and boys strewn all over and blow lines carved into the table and a pool. The grotto, he calls it.

Pretentious fuck.

Nigel snaps a shirt flat and stuffs it into his bag, and makes a mental note to remind the bastard that he lives in Long Island.

“The Hamptons,” Nigel mutters. “Fuck the Hamptons.”

“We can take the train there.”

“Should’ve made him send us a private fucking plane,” he says, before shaking his head and removing the unlit cigarette from his lips. He steps closer to Adam and curls a hand against his cheek. “You’ll be fine, sparrow. No one’s there but us. He’s given us the place while he’s off doing God fucking knows what, and I’m not one to look a gift horse in the fucking eye.”

“Mouth,” Adam says. “That’s the idiom. It wouldn’t make any sense if you looked a gift horse in the -”

“Mouth, then. Fucking horse mouth. You can stay inside all weekend or swim all weekend in the grotto or if you hate it we can just -”

“A grotto?” Adam asks, eyes widening.

“Like a water cave. I don’t know. It’s blue,” he says. “Pack your shit, darling, or we’ll miss the train.”

Adam slips from bed and pads past Nigel to get a duffel from the closet. He reaches, first, for his underthings, y-fronts and socks, and then pushes up on tiptoes to try to get down the box in which he keeps his swimmers.

“Nigel,” he whines after a moment, fingers just barely grazing the box even as he stands as tall as he possibly can. “Help me reach?”

“I thought that’s why you kept a chair in there.”

“That’s so I can sit on it to put on my shoes.”

Nigel blinks, ducks his head, and approaches slowly where Adam stands stretched just tall enough that his fingertips rest against the shelf. He’s sinewy, slight and slender. His trousers hang just right on his ass and Nigel can see a peek of pale skin where his shirt rides up.

“You could also fucking stand on it, angel.”

“Nigel!”

At this particular pitch, Nigel grasps him by the middle. Big hands holding securely to his skinny waist, Nigel grunts and picks him up, keeping him steady as he spasms and squirms in surprise. “Got it?”

Adam seeks and tugs the box closer, looking within to make sure he has the right one before nodding for Nigel to set him down again.

“Thank you,” he replies, turning to grin at the taller man. “Do you have something to swim in?”

“Does it fucking matter? We could swim naked there.”

“Don't do that,”

“Won't be anyone else to see,” Nigel reminds him and although Adam frowns, the smile he tries to hide reaches his eyes. He shrugs and steps past Nigel to upend the box onto the bed and dig through it for just the thing he needs.

“How long will we stay? Should I bring a book?”

“The weekend,” Nigel says again, stroking through Adam’s curls as he passes by to continue laying flat and violently stuffing his clothing into his bag. “You can if you want.”

“Stay the weekend?”

“Bring a book. We need fucking sunblock, you’ll burn to a crisp laying out reading all day.”

Nigel gives up packing nearly as soon as he’s started. An extra pair of pants he won’t need, a couple shirts. Underpants and a box of condoms, though they rarely bother now. He tosses in his razor and calls it a done job. The self-made master of Montauk will have whatever else they want, theirs for the usage as they like. An act of generosity, to repay Nigel cutting him in on a lucrative cocaine distribution ring that Nigel didn’t want to bother with. The bastard has boys for that, ready to drop off deliveries to particular clubs for him.

Nigel doesn’t mind the loss of money, still taking in a decent cut for no work whatsoever, but he made as if it was a thorn in his side until the house was offered for them to stay in, whenever they like.

“I can’t go,” Adam declares.

Nigel looks up at him from his cigarette, brows raised. “Fucking what?”

“I don’t have any swim trunks. I don’t know where they could have gone. This is the box they belong in and they’re not here, so if they’re not in this box then -”

“Then they’re in another fucking box.”

“No,” Adam says, shaking his head once. “No, they’re gone.”

“Come on,” pleads Nigel, expelling a puff of smoke as he rounds the bed to rub Adam’s shoulder, releasing him when his nervous little sparrow twists away. Nigel doesn’t touch him again, hand uplifted in apology. “There’ll be things for you there to wear. Or we’ll find one, it’s a fucking beach town.”

“I can't wear things that aren't mine, Nigel, it's wrong.”

“When you first got them, those trunks weren’t yours either,” Nigel points out, brows up and head tilted in a way that makes him feel scholarly but always makes Adam laugh. He does smile, even now. “You gotta make ‘em yours.”

Adam frowns but he doesn’t argue the logic. He can’t argue logic. It infuriates as much as it amuses him that Nigel has cottoned on to that and uses it as often as he can to end an argument. With another displeased sound, Adam leaves the box alone and goes to the bathroom to get a towel.

He packs meticulously alongside: pants, two button-down shirts, four pairs of underwear, some spare shoes -

“A fucking weekend, darling,” Nigel reminds him and Adam resists adding on top another pair of everything already packed.

They bicker briefly about the laptop, but Nigel relents first - he always does. This goes in his bag, since it’s got substantially more room. His claim that he’ll just use Adam’s phone charger because fuck it, who’s he got to talk to besides Adam anyway, and this conversation similarly does not fall in his favor. They return to the apartment twice from the sidewalk to gather things they’ve forgotten - Adam, his preferred toothpaste, and Nigel, his spare lighter.

Finally Nigel stuffs sparrow and bags into a cab and they jettison off to Penn Station. Traffic’s not bad this early, though the station is miserably crowded as always. Nigel slips Adam’s headphones onto his ears and kisses his brow before he can slide his hoodie up over his curls. Closed off from the chaos, Adam calms until they can brave the boarding to their train.

“Four hours,” Nigel murmurs, lifting Adam’s noise-canceling ear-cup just enough to whisper to him as they settle into their seats.

“Four hours and forty-five minutes,” Adam answers, “if there’s no delays.”

Nigel doesn’t argue that. He merely stands from his seat and cranes his neck to where the bathrooms are. Nearly five fucking hours without a cigarette will be murderous for them both. He’s become damn near semi-professional at smoking where he isn’t meant to.

“Will your book last that long?” Nigel asks him, settling back in, turning his body to have his back to people passing beside them, securing Adam in his own little corner by the window.

“Audiobooks are several times longer than a trip to Montauk,” Adam points out not unkindly. “What will you do?”

“Sleep,” Nigel considers. “Watch you read.”

“Watch me listen.”

Nigel grunts an agreement, ignoring the complaining noise of a passenger squeezing through the narrowed pathway between seats now half-occupied by Nigel’s back. Adam watches him from the corners of his eyes, and with a secretive smile, presses play on his recording again. Nigel knows that if he does manage to nod off, the time will go by faster and he’ll be that much closer to a cigarette.

For a long time, however, he’s content to simply watch Adam beside him, lost in his own little world as the train rattles on to Long Island.

“Nigel,” Adam whispers. “Nigel.”

“Four hours and forty-five fucking minutes, darling.”

“The train’s stopped.”

Nigel blinks awake, bleary-eyed, and draws himself upward with a deep breath. He strokes Adam’s cheek with his fingers and nods to a man in a suit passing by.

“The fuck are we?”

“Montauk.”

“Fucking finally,” Nigel declares, turning back to Adam to snare his hand and pull him upward, too. Nigel takes their bags, dragging Adam behind as he seeks out freedom for a cigarette before they try to flag a cab to the house. “Alright, sweetheart?”

Adam nods and smiles, slipping his hoodie down but keeping the headphones on until they pass through the worst of the crowds in the station. He holds Nigel’s hand and doesn't let it go, watching him push a cigarette between his lips and light up with his only free one before hoisting their bags higher up on his shoulder.

The weather is nice, mild enough to not require them wear more than what they already have on. After a while, Adam even unzips his hoodie as they walk. He stops when Nigel tugs him towards a cab.

“Have another one,” he says.

“What, darling?”

“Cigarette. Another cigarette. We can get the next cab.”

Nigel watches him a moment more, and despite how Adam wiggles shyly when he does it, despite that there are others around who no doubt notice, Nigel leans close and holds a kiss against his angel’s cheek. He keeps it there until he can feel Adam blush, and until slender fingers press against his chest. “God,” Nigel sighs, “I fucking love you.”

“I know you do. You tell me all the time.”

“Good, I don’t want you to forget it.”

Nigel happily lights another cigarette from the remains his first, already pleased by the sensation of life flowing back into him after so long without. They walk contentedly towards the city square, and only when Nigel finishes his second cigarette does he nearly get smacked by a cab, hurling himself in front of it. The driver honks. Nigel shrugs, and they both slip into the car to get to the house.

This, thankfully, is not a long trip. The cab meanders through the center streets before hitting the more expensive suburbs. Quiet as New York isn’t, houses the size of a block worth of apartments filter past the windows and Adam sets his hand to the glass as they watch.

Nigel tells the driver the number again and frowns at the house the cab stops by. It is, in a word, fucking enormous. Ridiculously so. A huge gate and a carefully kept garden beyond which sits a house that looks like someone ordered it out of a catalog.

“This is it?”

“The number you said,” the driver confirms. “Kinda hard to miss.”

“Fuck me,” Nigel mutters, and the cab driver wisely chooses not to respond. Nigel pays the man, and when a look of skepticism is sent his way, he palms him another twenty with a curse. Adam stands rapt before the gates and as the cab pulls away and Nigel lights another cigarette, bags over his shoulder, he approaches.

“This is too much,” Adam whispers.

“Why are you talking like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like someone’s going to overhear you.”

“I don’t feel like we should be here.”

“Fuck,” Nigel snarls. “You belong anywhere you want to be. He’s fucking lucky you’re gracing his house with your presence.”

Removing a crumpled slip of paper from his pocket, Nigel punches in the code for the gate that parts in the center and swings wide. They make their way slowly up the drive, past a fucking fountain, to the front door of the immense red-brick manor that towers over and around them. It’s as if several houses were all cobbled together, joined by balconies and scenic towers, spiking the sky with fireplaces.

Nigel can hear the sea, they’re so close to it. The air is cool and the breeze salty. He draws a deep breath, then finishes the breath with a drag off his cigarette.

“Fuck it,” he decides, fishing out his keys to open the door.

Within, the house isn't any less grand. In fact, from the outside the only sign of its grandeur is its fucking size. Inside, the sheer ridiculousness of what people with money choose to lavish it on is finally made clear.

There is a mosaic on the floor, carefully laid out to mimic a sunset with tiny pieces of all different shapes making it up. Above them, a fresco on the ceiling, an imitation of something Italian. Chubby cherubs and cotton candy clouds. Nigel snorts and shakes his head.

The staircase - one of several dozen, Nigel would wager - imitates something out if a goddamn children's film, sweeping and wide, gold trim on the edge of each step.

It is ridiculous. There is no other word for it.

“What does he do with a house this big?” Adam whispers, stepping closer and pressing to Nigel as he takes the space in as well.

“Stuffs it full of eighteen year-olds he finds at the club and fills their noses with blow enough that they want to stay,” Nigel says, though when Adam stares at him, briefly aghast, Nigel regrets having done so. “Parties. Visitors. Fuck if I know, darling, I’m not one of the rich and fucking famous.”

Nigel chooses the stairs, though the house rings with silence but for their whispered words. It seems fucking exhausting, to have to go so far between bedroom and kitchen, kitchen and couch, back up to the bedroom. Nigel can scarcely manage himself across their flat on particular booze-soaked nights.

“You go left,” Nigel decides at the top of the stairs, “and I’ll go right. We’ll each find a bedroom and then pick between them.”

Adam shakes his head and turns to look over the banister to the mosaic beneath them, rather pretty when seen as it should be. But when Nigel goes one way he reluctantly goes the other way. He knows for a fact that should he get lost Nigel would tear the place down brick by brick to find him again.

The floors here are carpeted in plush burgundy. It's soft beneath Adam’s shoes and he can only imagine how nice it will feel against his bare feet. There are doors upon doors open as he passes from the open entry into a hallway. Bathrooms and storage rooms, billiard rooms and sparsely populated reading rooms.

Adam finds the first bedroom sixteen doors down from where he and Nigel parted.

It is comfortable, though enormous, as everything in this house seems to be. The size of their apartment, the room is painted in creams and silvers. Wide windows overlook the beach beyond and two doors lead from it, one to a fully stocked walk in closet, one to a lavish bathroom.

“Nigel!”

“What the fuck, Adam,” comes the response, carrying down the long hallways between them.

“I found one!”

He hears Nigel returning to him with soft carpet squishing beneath his feet and muttered curses. Nigel finally appears and returns Adam’s smile, before whistling low as he takes in the room. “Nicely done, angel.”

“What about the one you found?”

“I didn’t fucking find one, it’s all bullshit rooms for bullshit,” he says, dropping their bags to the bed. He stretches, languid, and drops his hands to his sides, stepping to the window to take in the private beach and shining sea beyond. Nigel takes his hand and twines their fingers together. His knuckles are swollen and thick, broken and healed a dozen times or more. Adam’s fingers are sleek and slender, but hold him firm.

“Come on,” Nigel says. “I could use a fucking swim right about now.”

Adam looks at the ocean too, biting his lip and knowing he will be watching it for most of the night, unable to sleep in a new place, curious about the sound of sea instead of cars and constant motion.

“Where's the pool?” he asks, and Nigel shrugs, tugging him along to find it.

“In here someplace,” he offers.

They feel as though they’ve walked an hour by the time they find the thing. By that point Adam joined in on Nigel’s game of trying to guess what the “bullshit” rooms were for. Neither understand the necessity for such a huge house. They have the money to buy their own, or several apartments in several major cities yet neither want to. They don’t need anything outside of their comfortable apartment.

“It does look like a cave,” Adam murmurs, smiling as they enter the room housing the promised and quite frankly astounding indoor pool.

Blue lights shine flickering beneath the water, spilling waves of light against the low-slung ceiling above. There are pillars made to resemble stone, and false stones darken the ground beneath the water. A small hot tub is set at the same water-height, and there are several places to sit. Nigel grins as he sights the bar, unmanned but stocked.

He turns to Adam and grasps his cheeks, nuzzling alongside his nose. “See,” he says. “No noisy assholes. No waves. Warm water and quiet so you can swim as much as you fucking like.”

“And read.”

“And fucking read,” Nigel agrees warmly, leaning close to lock their lips together. Adam presses against him, wonderfully small and entirely too lovely in the needy, grateful sound he makes. Only when Nigel strokes a hand through his hair does Adam relent in his ardent kisses.

“I don’t have anything to swim in.”

“Swim in your fucking pants. Swim in nothing.”

Adam licks his bottom lip - Nigel fixates on the flicker of pink tongue against the plush curve of it - and shakes his head. “I can’t do that. Are you going to do that?”

“Fucking right I am. I’d swim naked if the pool was fucking packed.”

“You’re...” Adam sighs, fond. “Don't do that if a pool is packed.”

“Shall I do it now when it's empty?”

“If you like,” Adam tells him, and moves off around the edge of the pool to look for a place to set his things. He doesn’t want to swim in his underwear, and he certainly doesn’t want to swim in the nude. Maybe he can just soak his feet in the water and watch Nigel swim for a while. Maybe the next day they could buy something. 

He hears bottles clanking together and turns to see Nigel very happily raiding the bar for a drink. He doesn’t make him stop. He doesn’t care if Nigel drinks so long as he is back with Adam and safe by the end of it.

“It’s like a museum,” Adam says, voice echoing in the watery chamber. “Everything is so pristine, as though no one has been here before.”

“Knowing that asshole he doesn’t even get someone to do fucking laundry, he just buys new things when the old get dirty,” Nigel scoffs, sitting back on one of the stools and turning three bottles before himself to scrutinize.

“I thought he was your friend.”

“Maybe he is,” Nigel allows. “That doesn’t make him any less a fucking asshole.”

Adam considers this and once more finds Nigel’s logic sound enough not to argue. Two bottles chosen from the stash, Nigel returns past Adam and sets them on the sloping ledge into the pool. He pries of his shoes first, then drops his trousers, stripping down.

“Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion has a grotto,” Adam notes. “It’s very famous.”

Nigel stops mid-hop, sock half-removed and held in one hand, snorting a laugh. “The fuck do you know about Playboy mansions, darling?”

“I read about grottos on my phone while you were asleep. He puts female models in his, though.”

“Not this bastard. It’s like a fucking choir’s run amok when he has one of his fucking events. Thinks he’s the... “ Nigel pauses. He searches for the words, and can’t find them. Adam meets his gaze evenly and Nigel frowns. “The one with the egg.”

“The egg?”

“West Egg and East Egg.”

“The Great Gatsby,” Adam asks, brows lifting beneath his curls as Nigel lets his underpants pool around his ankles.

“That fucking one. I read it one night,” he adds defensively, “while you were asleep.”

Adam blinks again but doesn’t deny it. More and more he has found Nigel curling up around books in their apartment. He is a slow reader, always frowning behind his glasses and cursing at the words, but he plows on through them regardless, whether for enjoyment or stubbornness it's hard to say.

Adam opens his mouth to say something else but finds all he can do is just watch as Nigel takes a running leap into the pool and with a shout breaks the surface of the water and sinks to the bottom. The sound echoes for a good few seconds before Adam steps closer to the edge and crouches, waiting for Nigel to come back up again. He grins when he does, watching the older man flick his hair from his face with a gasp.

“Fuck that's good.”

“You look nice wet,” Adam tells him, smiling when Nigel gives him that look he often does when he's found an unspoken meaning in Adam’s words he hadn't intended to put there.

“I feel nice wet, too,” Nigel suggests. Adam bites his bottom lip and makes a small sound. It’s true. He does feel good when he’s wet. They’ve shared enough showers to know that, but it would feel even nicer suspended together and weightless in the pool, almost as if they were floating in space.

Almost, but for the gravity that will require them to remain afloat.

It’s near enough.

“There’s pool rooms,” Nigel tells him, centering Adam back to himself. “A changing room there,” he says, pointing. A slow kick brings him to the side of the pool and he cracks open the first bottle chosen for himself. “Push my pants over so I can smoke and see if anyone’s left anything in there, sweetheart.”

Adam does so, crouching still as Nigel lights up and hums his pleasure at being so damn comfortable. Then Adam stands and goes to explore where Nigel had pointed. He had seen clothes in the walk-in, brand new and unworn, clearly intended for whomever was using the room at the time. Maybe Nigel’s right and the owner of this house circulates continuously whatever is within it.

It would be similar to buying something from a store.

The changing room is similar to the grotto beyond, Grecian statues in the corners holding false candles or presenting on plates a selection of cigars and little bags of powder or leaves.

Adam ignores those and proceeds on.

As expected, towards the back by the huge shower and low shallow bath is a closet filled with swimwear and towels. Adam peruses through, finding many things to be not of his size or of his gender. He does pull free some of the bikinis just to look at them, marveling at why someone would wear something that covers nothing at all. Surely just remaining nude would be easier.

The men’s selection he finds similarly scandalous and wanting, and so turns towards the little door within the closet itself, where within he finds swimwear and bathers much more to his liking.

By the time he comes out, Nigel is halfway through the first bottle and on his third cigarette, floating on his back with the filter between his lips and the end of the bottle in the water.

“Nigel,” Adam calls, pushing up on his toes and back down again. “I found some towels too.”

Nigel tilts forward from his back, seeking out the smooth stone bottom with his toes and nearly losing bottle and cigarette in the toppling. He throws his hair back, slinging an arch of water against the cavelike ceiling, but any words he might have said die in his throat.

Adam is wearing a one-piece suit, though not like the ones chubby women wear when they want to hide their stomachs. It’s old-fashioned, reminiscent of something someone might wear in a silent movie or some shit. A sleeveless shirt spreads down over his hips in dark, thick material with two broad white stripes along the bottom. Beneath are shorts, slim-fitting and snug, but any glimpse - and Nigel absolutely looks - of his figure beneath is sweetly obscured by the shirt above.

“Are you wearing a fucking unitard?” Nigel asks, slowly stepping clumsily closer, bottle and cigarette held aloft. “Baby…”

“It keeps me covered,” Adam says.

“Baby, sweetheart…”

“You’re not saying anything. You’re not saying anything of actual worth to which I can respond. If you don’t like it, you should tell me, and then I can just put on my normal clothes again -”

“I fucking love it,” whispers Nigel, before he laughs loud. “You look like fucking… Weissmuller, that was his name. Johnny fucking Weissmuller.”

Adam’s lips part, and he shakes his head.

“Fucking Tarzan,” exclaims Nigel, and then he relents, groaning low. “It doesn’t matter. Get in the fucking water and let me touch you, darling, you’re going to fucking kill me standing out there.”

Adam shakes his head but it isn't a denial. He steps away to find a shallower part of the pool to enter and squirms a little as he steps down, bringing a hand back as though to cover himself as he lowers into the water.

“It’s a little small,” he mumbles, submerging himself. “But the others were significantly bigger and I couldn’t wear them. And they had little else in there for men, and I didn't want to not wear anything like you, I don't look good wet like you do if I don't wear anything.”

“Bullshit,” Nigel predictably declares. “You’re a fucking nymph. Like a little water fairy, so gorgeous I’d let you drown me if you wanted.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I am,” Nigel says. “Yes.”

He crushes out his cigarette against one of the little shell-shaped lamps that reflects dim lights back into the water, and flicks the butt away. The bottle is left behind and with long strokes, Nigel swims nearer to Adam, who pauses in his careful descent. Nigel wants desperately to grab him, to pull him under the water and watch his blue eyes flash beneath the waves they make. He wants to turn Adam beneath him and watch his curls fan out like seaweed.

He doesn’t. He behaves. He waits for Adam to descend entirely into the water with a pleasant shiver.

“Can I touch you?” Nigel asks, treading water comfortably.

Adam frowns and folds his arms over his chest. “You never ask if you can touch me. You don't have to ask if you can touch me, I like when you do.”

Nigel just grins, taking the invitation for what it is, and propels himself closer to grasp Adam and pull him near. Adam squirms and sets his hands between them, comfortably splayed against Nigel’s bare chest. He smiles at the older man and wrinkles his nose when Nigel kisses it.

“I feel silly,” he admits quietly, parting his lips for a kiss when Nigel leans in for one. Dragging Adam with him, he steps further into the deep end of the pool. “I remember seeing suits like these in the movies and in books I read and always wondering why anyone would wear them. They look silly but are in fact very comfortable. Very practical for pleasure swimming. But this one is a bit too…”

“Sexy,” Nigel agrees. Adam smiles wider, and his blush spreads as he shakes his head.

“No.”

“Enticing.”

“No. Yes,” Adam amends, “for you, but I don’t feel enticing.”

“Fucking hot,” asks Nigel, and Adam spreads his fingers over Nigel’s lips to quiet him, laughing.

“Tight,” he says. “It feels a bit too tight.”

Nigel’s hum reverberates under Adam’s fingers, and he parts his lips to draw the tip of one between. Suckling softly, gaze fixed on watching Adam’s eyes hood, Nigel runs his hands down the woolen fabric and curls his hands beneath his bottom. It doesn’t surprise Nigel at all that the bastard would keep things like this around, dressing up his boys as he pleases. He can’t help but see the appeal, as he works his fingers under the legs of Adam’s snug little shorts.

Adam squirms and laughs, pressing his hands against Nigel’s chest as he's hoisted up in the water and held against him.

“You’re making it worse,” he chastens him. Nigel merely hums in reply, content to be blamed as long as he can hold Adam against him like this and slowly work him to hardness. Which, in truth, would make the tightness of his little shorts even worse.

Adam wraps his legs around familiar hips and enjoys the way the water holds him up. It has been a long time since he’s been in a swimming pool. A long time since he has been able to let himself float and allow the water to carry him. With a grin he leans back until his shoulders and hair touch the water, legs still clinging to Nigel, stomach sucked in and hips sharp where the fabric of his borrowed swim things cling to them.

Nigel stops his groping to instead rest a hand at the small of Adam’s back. He sets the other on his belly, made concave as he stretches. Twitching in surprise when Nigel steps forward, Adam slowly relaxes and lets himself be floated around the pool by Nigel’s steady stride.

“You’re like a fucking mermaid,” Nigel whispers, watching Adam’s hair spread in a dark corona around his head.

“Merman would be the proper term.”

“You’re like a fucking merman,” he says. “Like an old-fashioned fucking merman.”

“Merpeople, according to legend, used to lure men to their deaths at sea,” Adam tells him. “Of course they’re not real, but people always try to make up stories for things they can't explain. Scientifically it is likely mermaids were, in fact, manatees, which is still ridiculous considering the manatee is a grazer...”

Nigel slips the hand on his stomach to the waistband of Adam’s pants and snaps the waistband, surprising him back to the here and now.

“Then think of me, drunk as a fucking sailor, imagining you as a fucking merman. Would you seduce me, love?”

“Do I have to seduce you again?” Adam blinks at him, reaching for Nigel and holding himself upright against him. “I’m not very good at it.”

Nigel tucks his arms beneath Adam’s butt and holds him aloft, watching his angel above him. “You’re a natural, darling. You’re doing it already.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Adam laughs.

“See?” Nigel slides his hand to Adam’s arm and brings his hand down between them. Across hairy chest and hairy stomach, down to his cock swelling fat in the warm water and nearness. Adam bites his lip and makes a little sound, curling his fingers as best he can in this awkward position. Nigel hardly minds, lips parting with a groan.

“I’m not going to drown you, though,” Adam says.

“Taking pity on an old seaman?” Nigel has to work not to laugh at the word.

“Legends also said that sometimes a merperson and a human being could fall in love. If they did, the tail would vanish and legs would grow instead, and the merperson would walk away from the person they had drawn in and they would die alone.”

“Fuck’s sake, Adam.”

“I won’t do that to you either,” Adam promises, squirming a little so he can get a better grip on Nigel the way he's held. “But you're getting hard thinking about it.”

Nigel groans and steps back to deeper water, a waterfall behind them immediately lights up from their proximity and he curses in surprise.

“Would you catch me if I swam away?” Adam asks him.

“I’m getting hard because you’ve got your hand on my cock,” Nigel informs him, eyeing the waterfall balefully, but the half-truth doesn’t sit quite right. Lying comes so easily to him most times, a knee-jerk habit born of necessity. But Adam’s trust is a thing that Nigel guards with the ferocity of a fucking pitbull, and he sighs. “And from thinking of you as a fucking merman. Leaving me. At least I’d get to watch your ass as you walk away.”

Adam curls his fingers tighter around the head of Nigel’s prick as Nigel finds a space beside the waterfall for them. There’s a little outcropping built in to be sat upon and he lowers himself slowly, Adam’s legs spreading over his thighs. Now Adam takes him properly, and without reservation, Nigel slides his hands down the back of his darling’s shorts.

“If you’re a merman,” Nigel asks, “what am I?”

“Hard.”

“Besides that, darling.”

Adam considers as he strokes Nigel more, shifting to feel him hard between his own legs. This, Adam is good at now. This, Adam likes a lot.

“In love?”

“Can’t fucking argue that,” Nigel grunts, slipping his hands against the tight shorts Adam wears once more. “Some idiot sailor who stepped too damn close to something divine.” He draws his fingers against the cleft of Adam’s bottom through the shorts and grins when he squirms, tickled.

“Stop,” Adam laughs. “I’ll swim away.”

“I’ll catch you.”

Nigel strokes him again and with a shrieking laugh Adam launches himself from his lap and into the water, slinking beneath the surface and propelling himself away with splashes and uncoordinated kicking.

Nigel gives chase immediately. Of course he does. Just as happy to be graceless in the water as Adam, faster than him yet never quite able to grab a skinny little ankle before Adam manages to twist away. When Adam surfaces again he shakes his hair from his face and turns to press his back to a wall, shaking his head when Nigel cages him against it and leans in to press sloppy kisses to his cheek.

“I need to get out,” Adam tells him, but the upset isn't there, there is laughter bubbling beneath the surface instead. “I need - the towel - Nigel, stop.”

“And let you fly away from me, little sparrow? Afraid not,” Nigel purrs, sucking a lingering kiss against the underside of Adam’s jaw. He follows the curve with his tongue, up to his ear, and suckles the lobe until Adam shivers against him. Slipping a broad hand between their bodies, Nigel strokes Adam through his shorts, spans fingers over his belly beneath the silly quaint top that he wears, up to his hairless chest and across a nipple.

“I thought I was a merman.”

“And an angel.”

“I can’t be all of those things,” Adam grins, folding his arms around Nigel’s neck and pushing his fingers into his hair.

Nigel laughs, rough and low, and slips Adam’s shorts down to his thighs. “You’re all those things and more, darling. And you’re not leaving this fucking pool until I’ve made you mine for good.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Grotto Illustration](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6070228) by [TheSeaVoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSeaVoices/pseuds/TheSeaVoices)




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